For comparison, here is symbolic derivatives in C. I wrote this in 1990 for school project: https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/x/xquiz https:

For comparison, here is symbolic derivatives in C. I wrote this in 1990 for school project: https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/x/xquiz https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/tree/master/x/xquiz I need to make slides and a better write up for it, but the program is a math quiz with equation editing and graphing capabilities for X. It includes a simplifier which will take derivatives if they are in the form: D(x^2)/D(x) The simplifier also combines terms, reduces fractions, etc. I was shooting for something like Macsyma. The derivative taking function is here: https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/x/xquiz/simplify.c#L208 https://github.com/jhallen/joes-sandbox/blob/master/x/xquiz/... Equations are parsed into LISP-like lists, defined in box.h. There are list nodes, numbers and symbols. They are allocated in aligned pages. To distinguish between them, you look at the page header. Some of the classic LISP implementation used this same technique- I was interested in it at the time, but wouldn't use it today. As you type equations in, they are typeset in standard math notation on the screen. You can edit the tree by selecting any part of the equation with the mouse. Once something is selected, you can type in a replacement, or click simplify, distribute, or factor. I had fun correlating mouse coordinates with tree locations.